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I love "paper lung" and always imagined it being a retro nomenclature rather than actual paper.  didnt Dredd get that in the explosion he took the brunt of in the post-Oz "Hitman" story?

 

I think the episode could have been saved for me by Jodie going all Chris Morris vs Peter O Hanra Hanrahan when the woman said "We know all about the Death Particle-"  "REALLY?"  "Yes"  "The Death Particle, where did you hear about that, then?"  "It's a legend..." "A LEGEND?! Really?"  "yeah, a legend about that Cyberman" "The Cyberman who just talked about Cyberium creating the Death Particle in him" - "Thats the one, yes!" "The Cyberman who only just got the Cyberium in him?"  "Errr"  "And was just talking to the Master about how this is the new plan of the Cyberium?" .. ."err" "

I think drama is like music or dance, and there is a pace and rhythm.  You don't pull Death Particles out of your ass and call it good Drama - that one element is indicative of the the whole approach to story telling - make it up as we go along, there's no "architecture" to it, no skill, no flow.  We know why Wagner is good, we know why Alan Moore is good... it's story telling.  I am at a loss how anyone who can tell the quality in a Wagner/Moore script can be satisfied with the... shoddiness of it all?

I'm not happy to be "on the same side" of all the outraged gammon bleating about PC gone mad/woke/agendas etc.... but subpar drama and cliche are subpar drama and cliche

i enjoyed it, have enjoyed most of this series. Jodie is a wonderful Doctor except for the "derp" face she pulls way too often.

I just with Leigh would tell us what he REALLY thinks!

Except it doesnt work as an explanation at all... the Doctor's mind had been wiped, so he wouldnt remeber these Doctors... but if he did, why didn't it spark him to remember the past lives and investigate them at teh time? Fan service, but raising more questions than it superficially answers

(and when I say depth, I mean genuine characterfulness, not pasted on and often contradictory emoshes)

https://www.radiotimes.com/news/tv/2020-03-02/doctor-who-the-timeless-children-review/

Why does Ruth Doctor have a Police Box?  Why has the Doctor only just bumped into another version of herself?  If it is because Gallifrey isnt on the scene, that doesnt work given it has been written out for the most part since Eccleston - then there are the implications for various stories, but all this is canon - it's Chibnall who is concerned with Canon, with how to make the Brain of Morbius Doctors canon, or that David Bishop/David Warner Big Finish story canon....

My concern with the canon bothering is three fold

I like the Doctor as a "person who got up one day and left for adventures" - people who enjoyed this episode I'm genuinely interested in how you feel about the Doctor being an agent of the CIA all these years (and how does that really make sense of an older Doctor running off - wouldnt he have been adventuring on behalf of the Division throughout the youth of Hartnell?  But that is canon bothering - are we happy the Doctors agency seems less?  That the Doctor is now "special" amongst Timelords? The real problem is you cant have both the gentleman adventurer Troughton/Pertwee/Baker being hit up by the Timelords to do the odd job, with him also being their top undercover guy/gal?

I hate "chosen ones" - Harry Potters and Luke Skywalkers - now the Doctor can be one too.

It was dull as ditchwater and cliched as hell! Doctor walks into a room and is paralysed, but sent to the Matrix, where anything can happen.... but we'll settle for a grey mist.  a Mark Millar version of the Master narrates.  And as the Ruth Doctor said, what did it reallly tell us about the Doctor that make a material difference? Problem is solved by a hilarious scale model of a cyberman with a newly revealed and entirely plot or character unrelated get out and a convenient old man to do the thing the Doctor thinks shouldnt be done?

The show did well enough wihtout canon, without trying to burden the character with depth - it was all mined in Ecclestons first series - man/woman who will do good in dire circumstances.  Never cruel or cowardly.

The Niemand Dredd was great - if it had ended this week that would have been fine.  Perhaps a others have pointed out a bit derivative in terms of "fish out of water bumps against Dept", but well put together - love the scene where you just see the aliens face reacting to the various indignities encountered....

I thought it was the very definition of not fun! sluggish pacing, sloppy exposition, cliched cyber action and convenient death particle, Doctor not willing to kill, but happy for others to do it for her (loving  the Cybermen and the Master  letting them have that little debate and giving her time to run to the TARDIS, great drama there...)

Well, I thought that was fun.

At one point I did think it was being deliberately awful, in a "I am a terribly clever writer and will SHOCK you as I twist this round" - when the Doctor blows the Matrixes mind by showing it 12/13 lives (despite it containing the whole of Timelord history) and she is lying on the floor, and the fam came in, it looked momentarily like it was filmed differently - like 80s video - I thought it was going to do a meta - fiction within fiction reveal that would set up an arc for next season maybe? Something Matrixy? Something that would explain the absolute howler that was the Death Particle (when your woman mentioned she knew all about it, I was convinced we were in meta territory!)

I'm reminded of Grant Morrison's time on X-Force(?) where he got loads of complaints from comics fans that he was being too poncey, so he deliberately wrote the most cliched episode he could.  when ll the plaudits started coming in "Morrison finally gets it!" etc etc, he sneered at his new found fans, claiming that it showed who he could write the shite everyone else did, but he was much too Superior for that....

This reminded me of that, but sadly, without the smug revelation that the writer could do anything more than Saturday Morning serial....

Yes there were some glaring bits of terrible overblown Force Awaken style action contrivance. Yes I'm not sure I need the Doctor to be... whatever the Doctor was there ... and christ The Master was an overblown panto villian and would have been so much more effective and creepy if dialled down about a notch or two... or twelve actually... as would the Cybermen if a simple story decision had been to limit their number, make things all the more plauisable and them all the more creepy, but you know what despite some terrible bits and all that I really enjoyed that.

I mean why the Doc let Ben Kenobi do [spoiler]the self sacrfice [/spoiler]bit just after he'd turned off the tractor beam seemed very out of character but I still liked it... not loved it for the various reasons above but it did, somehow, wrap things up well and make the second half of this season a satisfying whole.

I wish he had been


Has he never heard of Chekov's Death Particle?

Tosh doesn't begin to cover it.  dull tosh?  Dull, illogical tosh?  Dull, self important, illogica tosh?

I know saying that it felt like it was plotted by a 5 year old is lazy criticism, but not  fraction as lazy as this was.

"Only I can detonate the death thing... "  "Goodbye Doctor...."   "Hang on, I could do that, thinking about it!"  Cliche mounted on cliche, like a writer whose only exposure to fiction was old episodes of 80s cartoons ala Captain Planet (which come to think of it would explain the "theme of the week" as well)..

When the woman did the "The myth of the death particle" speech, I have to say that is some of the best acting I have seen in Doctor Who - to be fair, they all knocked their socks off to be able to deliver this static exposition heaped upon exposition - the catharsis of spurious morality had nothing on this beauty.

cheers both

Just went through and experimented - realised I hadnt done the 2020 Specials bundle!

Any clues on what is covered?  Only one item I presume as 50% seems pretty decent... cover any of the new lovely things?

So I log into my account and I have two 50% discounts - one runs out in August, so better get that gone....

But how? It talks about a voucher code, but all I can see are two boxes that tell me what the discount is for and when it runs out - no code?

If Chibnall is working up to a Gallifey IS in Ireland, I will be smashing my screen Ian Levine style! 

Actually. looking more closely at the envelope, Postie has bent it about 2/3rd of the way -very neat bend, not obvious now it has straightened out - shame the same cant be said for the print - a "do not bend" message might aahve been in order on the envelope?

It is very nice, though mine is somewhat...bent.  Not the envelope, just the print itself- not super creased bent, more "Droid tried to put it in the envelope and met resistance" bent, but annoying nonetheless!

I think that's a fair assessment - I was not keeping up with Capaldis last series - the Moon is an Egg/Spontaneous Trees episodes did for me I think - then the way the First Doctor got character assassinated in the final Capaldi had me in a position where even with Chris "Cyberwoman" Chibnall as the successor was a step up.

First series of Jodie I intermittently enjoyed - it felt more like old Who, for good and ill - I think it started by breaking Moffatts "dont start your episode with two "aliens" discussing their culture/problems" rule? 

Ryan I still find terribly flat, but Yaz is decent and Graham entertaining...  I liked the lack of "BIG" arcs last series, so am wary of "GALLIFREY DESTROYED/EVERYTHING YOU KNOW IS A LIE!", but let's see where it lands....

I need to take part more in this forum. So... Doctor Who?

I'm enjoying this series. My feelings about the last one were that I thought Jodie Whittaker made a good Doctor, but the stories were mostly pretty dull (except the giant spiders one, which was really cringy, and the Pakistan one, which was elevated by its beautiful photography) and there were probably too many companions, with Yaz more often than not left with not much to do.

This series is a big improvement in how much more fun the stories are. It can get a bit message-y (but it could do that under Moffatt too), and there was that one episode in particular where the message was delivered by a marching band of sledgehammers (which also stole the future predators from Primeval). But mostly, it's upped the bonkers quotient, so I'm happy.

Story by story:

Spyfall - this was fun, packed with incident and ideas. The new Master is a good take on the character (I wasn't keen on John Sim - too manic - but I loved Missy) and the use of historical characters was well done.

Orphan 55 - <paxman>yeeesssss</paxman>. This series' Arachnids in the UK.

Nikola Tesla's Night of Horror - well cast, the giant scorpions were a bit "we need a monster, what can we use?", but a good fun throwaway episode.

Fugitive of the Judoon - marvellous. Lots of misdirection, centred around a total mindfuck. This is my kind of Doctor Who story.

Praxeus - another eco-message episode. To be honest, I only half-watched this one, there were other things going on in my house, so I don't really know how good it was.

Can You Hear Me? - Loved this one. An obvious moral, but one I can relate to, and well integrated into the story. Ian Gelder's performance as the big bald baddie was delicious.

The Haunting of Villa Diodati - another excellent one. Very creepy, the half-converted cyberman was a fantastic design, pays off Jack's warning and sets up the big finale. I know you couldn't really kill off any of the famous aristocratic characters, but the servants deserved better.